I am looking for an e-book reader capable to display scanned books (with each page being a scanned image) like those availabe at Archive.org. I already own an ordinary Kindle (i.e. not the DX-version, the display of which is too small for this purpose, however. I abhor reading longer texts sitting at the computer and instead have them printed and bound, but that is fairly expensive and not really what I want If I am merely interested in "testdriving" a scanned book.

What about e-book readers like the PocketBook 902 or PocketBook 912? These have a 9.7" (24.63 cm) display (measured diagonally). For comparison, my Kindle's display's diagonal measures only 15 cm (about 5.9").

Does anyone of you have any experience with this sort of "large" e-book reader in connection with image-pdf files? I'm especially interested in two things:

Is the reader able to display image-pdfs well so that they can be read without a strain for the eyes (both as far as display size and resolution is concerned)?

Is the reader capable to deal with large file sizes (starting with 50 MB but sometimes well above 100 MB)?

I'm interested in hearing about any large e-book readers, not only about PocketBook products.

I don't know about the readers you are asking about, but I am wondering why you are dismissing the DX so quickly. I have the Kindle DX and use it to read pdf files all the time. Most of the ones I read are actually 8.5 x 11 scans (or original pdf documents), so they get reduced in size some but are still easily readable. I would suspect that the overwhelming majority of scanned books on archive.org and google books had much smaller paper sizes and would, if anything, be slightly magnified on the DX display.

I personally think the DX is the most amazing e-book reader. Unfortunately, Amazon doesn't agree with me and is discontinuing it...

edonnelly wrote:I don't know about the readers you are asking about, but I am wondering why you are dismissing the DX so quickly.

I want an e-book reader which is directly available in Europe instead of being merely shipped there from the USA. And the rumour that the "Kindle DX" has been discontinued is not exactly inviting, either, especially because my first (normal) Kindle had to replaced after only two months due to a faulty battery. The replacement itself worked fine, but if you have to send it to USA... I don't know, that does not appeal to me.

But your comment concerning the size of the scans is somewhat reassuring.

aloimonon wrote:When it comes to reading PDFs, my own research indicates that the Onyx M92 (9 inches, *Pearl screen*, the only such for large e-Readers) is probably the best candidate.

Thank you for the hint. However, I'm getting increasingly less confident about this matter the more I read.

Archive.org-files, especially, seem to pose quite a (computational) challenge for desktop pc, let alone e-book readers. See for example this thread from mobileread.com. Or this one.

Also I am starting to wonder a bit about the low working memory (256 MB for both the Onyx Boox M92 and PocketBook Pro 912). Quite a few of these files are very large. Although that might not be that much of a problem as swapping takes place with a (hopefully fast) flash-memory.

Hmm, a 10 inch tablet would certainly solve the problem of complex PDF viewing, but personally I don't like to use tablets for reading long texts, as I vastly prefer e-ink due because it gives me less eyestrain. From your research, it looks like layered archive PDFs are sometimes problematic. Unfortunately, I don't have anything more to say on this as I don't have this reader...but no one has mentioned problems with Google books. And some users have been exploring solutions of "flattening" layered PDF files. Hopefully Onyx will address this, but one should never purchase hardware on the hopes of future software bugfixes...sorry, I wish I could have ended on a more positive note!